PETALUMA, CA –  AUGUST 11, 2010

A Petaluma high school baseball coach and sports bar owner is facing felony charges after being arrested in connection with what is being called a large-scale illegal gambling ring in South San Francisco.

James Selvitella, 52, was arraigned Friday in San Mateo County Court with four alleged accomplices on charges they ran an illegal sports wagering operation out of a San Francisco apartment and a South San Francisco fire station, where Selvitella was a battalion chief.

He and the other defendants are due back in court on Aug. 26 to enter pleas to the charges. They are out of custody pending the hearing. If convicted of all charges, Selvitella faces a maximum of 3 years in prison.

The betting operation handled hundreds of thousands of dollars in wagers at a time, Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said. Evidence uncovered during one search showed receipts of $470,000 in wagers in one day, he said.

“It was a pretty big operation he was a part of,” Wagstaffe said. “That level of gambling is something we don’t see too much.”

Selvitella on Wednesday referred calls to his attorney, Jim Lassart of San Francisco, who didn’t return a message seeking comment.

Selvitella, his wife and two other couples in 2006 opened Beyond the Glory sports bar on North McDowell Boulevard in east Petaluma. He also is a junior varsity baseball coach at Casa Grande High School.

On the restaurant website, it states the couples opened a “sports bar for the whole family” after years of “frustration of trying to find a place for adults to hang out with their kids.”

Wagstaffe said he wasn’t certain whether the operation extended to the Petaluma bar, or whether proceeds from gambling may have financed the restaurant.

In July, the city’s planning commission unanimously approved a new 7,500-square foot building for a larger Beyond The Glory at Old Redwood Highway and North McDowell.

The investigation into the betting operation began a couple of years ago, Wagstaffe said, after the fire chief learned that a firefighter had fallen $30,000 in debt to the alleged racket.

Selvitella was fired in February 2008, according to court records. He is challenging his dismissal in federal court.

Wagstaffe said Selvitella solicited wagers from his fellow firefighters and would collect the cash from gamblers and deliver winnings. He would use his battalion chief’s phone, on average nearly three times a shift, to call in the bets and used city computers to research bets and follow games, according to court records.

The other defendants are Michael Cooper, 50, of San Francisco; William Kirkpatrick, 63, of Redwood City; Louis Kristovich, 71, of Millbrae and Christopher Mesa, 64, of Corte Madera.

They face felony charges of conspiracy to operate a bookmaking operation. Selvitella was the lead “salesman” who solicited bettors, Wagstaffe said.

SOURCE: Santa Rosa Press Democrat

Earlier today I received an email from LinkedIn telling me to try their new service called LinkedIn DirectAds.  I knew it was only an amount of time for LinkedIn to either partner with Google or create an some sort of in-house advertising model.  They have 66 million members worldwide, 32 million of them residing in the United States.  LinkedIn says, “for example you can target 7.9 business decision makers, 5.5 million high tech managers, 1.3 million small business, and 4.2 million corporate executives.”  You will be able to refine your search to target your EXACT demographic.

LinkedIn has made it relatively simple to create your first Ad.  Take a look below, I will guide you through the process.

Creating a New LinkedIn DirectAd

STEP 1 – Create Your Ad Campaign

Step one is the longest of the 4 steps, especially since it is vital to create at least 1 ad variation so you can at least split-test the effectiveness of ad1 and ad2.  LinkedIn allows you  to create up to 10 different ad variations under one campaign, all with different text and images if you’d like.  They also allow you to have a 25 character title and up to a 75 character description spanning no more than 2 lines as well as a field for your display and destination URLs.

STEP 2 – Target Your Audience

Step 2 is all about targeting your website’s audience.  They have a pretty cool way of showing you exactly how many people you are targeting.  For instance, this  screenshot shows you that there are 66,266,528 possible people that I can target with my campaign.  Let me refine my target market to demonstrate.  I run a web design firm who is looking to acquire new clients so I am going to go through the methods of refining my search to target my ideal client in LinkedIn Direct Ads. I know that I mainly design websites for small businesses so I am only going to check the boxes that would define my target client.  Take a look at the number of potential people that I now can target after filtering out the ones that generally wouldn’t buy my service, it is only 18,508.

STEP 3 – Set Your Campaign Budget

LinkedIn allows you to choose your payment method, either Pay Per Click (CPC) or pay per 1,000 impressions (CPM).  In my specific case LinkedIn says that my default bid is $4.91, with a suggested bid range between $4.91 – $5.95; Minimum Bid: $2.00.  The CPM choice says my default bid is $3.05, with a suggested bid range between of $3.06 – $3.52; Minimum Bid: $3.00.  You are allowed to select a daily budged , no lower than $10 per day, defaulting at $25. Once you have chosen your daily budged the last step is inputting your credit card information.

STEP 4 – Billing Information

Of course, the last step in the process is the billing information.  They ask for all the general billing information and also provide a helpful FAQ sidebar on all step throughout the process.

Take a look below and read what LinkedIn said in their blog post:

As the world’s largest and fastest-growing professional network, LinkedIn is a fantastic place for businesses of all sizes to reach professionals with targeted messaging.

That’s why today we’re announcing LinkedIn DirectAds, a new online product designed for LinkedIn members who want to market their business, product, or service to other members. While large brands and companies will be best served by contacting our sales team, DirectAds lets LinkedIn members purchase audience-targeted text advertising on the site for their businesses of any size. For example, maybe you’re a tax accounting firm looking to reach young professionals, or you’re a design agency looking to find potential new clients in key industries, or maybe you’ve just written a new book on a career or business topic. You can use DirectAds to get the word out to your target customers.

Using DirectAds, members can specify the audience that will see their ads (based on seven different criteria), write targeted messaging for their products, and pay by credit card – Premium Account holders even get 50% off. The whole process takes just a few minutes. We’ve opened up the product to a large number of our members, so you can try it out for your own business at https://www.linkedin.com/directads .

Like existing ads on our site today, DirectAds advertisements are intended to be non-obtrusive messages that accompany the overall experience of LinkedIn. Note that you won’t see any additional ads with the introduction of this product and every DirectAds ad includes the advertising member’s name and profile data, so you’ll know who is trying to reach members like you.

Google may be looking into buying a flight search engine, reports Bloomberg.

Google is currently in talks with the Massachusetts-based software company ITA. The transaction could cost Google upwards of $1 billion. Bloomberg’s source noted that, though they are currently discussing plans for a buyout, the negotiations have not been finalized yet.

ITA is a developer of flight software that helps users make online travel arrangements. Its software is currently used by Orbitz, Microsoft, and several other airlines.

“Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information, and ITA does that for travel,” Henry Harteveldt, an analyst at Forrester Research in San Francisco, told Bloomberg.

The takeover could have serious ramifications for travel search engine optimization(SEO). The digital marketing firm Efficient Frontier found that Bing was making serious gains in the travel sector – in 2009, Bing increased its travel sector market share by 160 percent. Microsoft currently uses ITA for Bing’s travel search engine. The travel sector generated $88.4 billion last year, according to Bloomberg.

Land Rover announced the released of the special edition Range Rover Sport LE. TheRange Rover Sport LE is going to be available only in 250 vehicles and will be equipped with a 4.2 liter Supercharged V8 engine and Land Rover’s permanent four wheel drive system coupled with Land Rover’s proven Terrain Response system.

Land Rover Press Release:

LAND ROVER OFFERS A SPECIAL VERSION OF ITS HIGHLY POPULAR RANGE ROVER SPORT

Following the huge success of the Range Rover Sport in the U.S. market, Land Rover North America is delighted to announce that a special version known as the LE will go on sale immediately.

The Range Rover Sport LE will be a very exclusive model with only 250 available in North America from August. This special version is equipped with flush-fitting front and rear bumpers, an extended rear roof spoiler, body-colored lower side panels, a new rear exhaust treatment, tread strips and 20-inch Stormer wheels which add to the vehicle’s visual appeal.

Inside the Range Rover Sport LE, there is a Luxury Interior Package that includes a cold climate option, adaptive front lighting, premium leather seats, hand-polished oak wooden trim and a center console cooler box. Carpet mats are also included. Furthermore, an audio visual entertainment system for rear seat passengers and adaptive cruise control are also included.

“Land Rover is delighted to offer a limited edition Range Rover Sport for those customers who want something a little different,” said Finbar McFall, Vice President of Marketing, Land Rover North America. “With many exclusive features and options, the Range Rover Sport LE will appeal to those consumers who want a level of personalization that reflects their taste and style.”

With the legendary on- and off-road prowess of the 2008 Range Rover Sport, the LE features a 4.2-liter Supercharged V8 engine. The permanent four wheel drive system is coupled with Land Rover’s proven Terrain Response™ system to provide the go-anywhere capability associated with the current Land Rover range.

The Range Rover Sport Supercharged equipped with the Limited Edition Package is priced at $81,450.

Apple may drop Google as its primary search engine, if the latest software update for the iPhone is any indication.

Last Thursday, Apple unveiled a new software update for the iPhone, iPhone 4.0 OS. One change that SearchEngineLand.com reported was that the Google search button in the iPhone mobile web browser was replaced by a generic search button. The search still goes through Google, but SearchEngineLand.com speculates that this could mean that Apple is looking to break away from Google in the update’s final release, which could have huge ramifications for search engine optimization (SEO).

Google and Apple have been on less-than-friendly terms ever since Google entered the smartphone market with the Android. By using Google as their default mobile search engine, Apple has allowed Google access to iPhone users’ search statistics and preferences, which could potentially be used to further the development of the Android.

Dropping Google for another search engine wouldn’t necessarily help Apple, though. Bing and Yahoo, the two leading search engine competitors of Google, are both tied to Microsoft, which also has a competing smartphone. Analysts have predicted that Apple will create its own search engine so it doesn’t have to rely on competitors, but that could take a few years to develop.

Many of the people behind the mobile and desktop clients more people use to access Twitter than Twitter.com itself are very angry with Twitter management right now.

They are so angry, in fact, that some of them are trying to figure out a way to do their business without Twitter itself.

They are upset because last week, Twitter’s top investor Fred Wilson called many of their applications product “hole-fillers” that make things for Twitter that Twitter would be better off making for itself.

Then, Twitter announced an “official” BlackBerry app. Then it acquired Atebits, the maker of Twitter app for the iPhone, Tweetie.

These developers and investors feel like Twitter is as popular as it is today thanks to their work, and that instead of supporting them, Twitter now plans to use its popularity to crush them. They are angry because they are alarmed.

And we’ve heard a growing group of them plan to do something about it.

Two sources deeply involved in the Twitter app world tell us that before Twitter holds its first ever developers conference this week, many developers attend secret meetings where they will discuss an “an open alternative” to Twitter.

“Discussion is not whether to launch an open federated standard,” says one source, “but when.”

This source tells us these meetings have a code name: Project Shark. “Angry sharks eat big fat #fail whales,” he explains.

Another source confirmed plans for these meetings, and told us their purpose is to…

• Get a little more coordinated as the opposition.
• Talk about things they want from Twitter — mostly more transparency and better access to the API.
• To talk about an open alternative.

An analyst with investment firm Piper Jaffray says that there is a 70 percent chance that Apple will release its own search engine to compete with Google and Bing within the next five years, making for further complications in the future search engine optimization (SEO) market.

According to eWeek’s Clint Boulton, “as the search provider for the iPhone, Google also sees what iPhone users are searching for, which can help it tailor software and services for its own mobile smartphones. This competitive advantage has not gone unnoticed by Apple.”

While the mobile market could well be the primary catalyst behind Apple’s rumored move, its primary difficulty will be a programming one, writes TechTremor. Creating a search engine is a massively difficult endeavor, but the company’s extensive resources and increasingly strong urge to compete with Google could push it into just such an attempt.

While the world of search engine optimization (SEO) could be seeing a new competitor emerge, SEO professionals are already bracing for the disappearance of an old one… My prediction is that Yahoo will soon be taken over by Bing.

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Microsoft has announced several new features in its Bing Maps service, including Foursquare Everywhere and a significant addition to its imagery data.

The Foursquare update, according to Matt McGee of Search Engine Land, will add “Foursquare data into Bing Maps to show checkins, tips, badges, mayorships, and so forth from Foursquare’s API. Bing says this is rolling out in stages, so some users may not see it yet in the applications gallery.”

Additionally, McGee writes, Microsoft has added 2.4 million square miles of image data into Bing, and given the option of taking the Bing Maps World Tour, which takes users through all of the new image data added to the maps service since its inception in August 2009.

The improved integration of Foursquare into Bing Maps, experts say, may be the most important of the additions. As localization functionality continues to become more and more important – thanks to the growth in internet-enabled smart phone use – such features will be crucial to future search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

(more…)

Google announced yesterday that a new feature for Adwords analytics called “search funnels” would help search engine marketing professionals better understand the way in which paid clicks lead users to their sites.

The company said that its new feature would provide “data on how ‘upper-funnel’ keywords are assisting conversions before the last click. It also enhances basic conversion reporting for AdWords.” Google also noted that Google Analytics users would be able to import data from those accounts for use with search funnels.

Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land reported that “until now, Google would only show you the last keywords that led to a conversion. In many cases, searchers will go through a searching process that includes research that might not lead to an immediate sale but may assist in a sale after a few more searches.”

Such a tool, as useful as it undoubtedly is for paid search marketers, is unlikely to be offered to natural search engine optimization (SEO) professionals anytime in the near future, due to concerns about privacy and security, according to Schwartz.

(more…)

Microsoft updates its Bing Maps application with more features, including one that integrates Flickr photos into its Streetside view, which presents an eye-level view of terrain. In the future, Microsoft plans to add real-time video, interior panoramas and constellation viewing to Bing Maps. The Bing road map for 2010 includes an increased focus on knitting together data from multiple sources for its results pages and structuring results more efficiently with help from third parties.

Microsoft has integrated new features into its Bing Maps application as it continues to battle Google for U.S. search engine market share. The latest features continue the bulking-up of Bing Maps that has taken place over the previous few months and follow the road map for Bing that Microsoft laid out in January at the Consumer Electronics Show.

One of the new features is a technology preview of the Streetside Photos application, which attaches geotagged Flickr photos to a particular location in Bing Maps’ eye-level Streetside view of terrain. Historical photos will also be incorporated, allowing users to see a particular neighborhood as it looked in the past. Microsoft is working on video overlay technology that will attempt to unite real-time video with street-level imagery, something it promises to demonstrate in more depth by the end of 2010.

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